I belong to a discussion group that meets weekly. The week after PBS aired Dr Davis' talk (Wheat Belly) I shared with the group--or started to share--what he talked about. I literally got shouted down before I could finish with: "People have been eating wheat for thousands of years! How can it be bad?" "Our wheat (Canada) has NOT been genetically modified!" "I can't live without bread!" And on and on. I felt I was under attack! Such closed mindedness. So much for wanting to share information that might make them more healthy.

My problem is that I am a convert to low carb eating (for the past 10 years) and was so successful and learned so much in my search for finding why I could not lose weight, that in my enthusiasm (like most converts) I wanted to share what I had learned with others. I guess I have bored them to death. They don't want to hear about it. Worse, those who have known me over these past 10 years, have started to try to tempt me to eat sugars. Some have totally forgotten that I avoid carbs and invite me over for lunch, give me the menu because they remember I am on a diet of some kind, and tell me that I don't have to eat the crust on the apple pie thinking I have a gluten intolerance.

Those who tempt me with chocolate covered plums (but fruit is good for you!), cookies, pastries do not realize that I face temptation every day! I tempt myself every time I grocery shop, go to a restaurant, or drive by Dairy Queen. They think it is funny!

Sorry for the rant. Just had to get it off my chest to people who, I think, can relate.

I've come to feel it's not even closemindedness.

It's more like snatching the bottle from an alcoholic. It's an addictive substance. People are not going to react the same way as when they were went told they should switch from butter to margarine.

It's not surprising. With the constant flux of misinformation from the media and the "experts" of the year, people aren't sure what is healthy, and more than anything, they want to think that their choices are informed. When something comes along that turns everything they believe upside down, it's very hard to take, and the stress of the prospect of resetting fundamental nutrition knowledge is daunting. I believe this is why we experience the backlash when people are confronted for the first time with information that informs them, "Everything you know is wrong."

Is this actually true? It may not have had gene transplants (which some limit the GMO label to), but I'm sure it has been subjected to Mendelian mutations (hybridization) over the years; seed producers are always trying to "improve" their products. Back in the olden days, when TV stations went dark after midnight, one US channel ended the broadcast day with "America the Beautiful" while showing videos of various beauties including amber waves of grain, taller than a man, actually waving in the wind. Canadian wheat fields near me don't look like those stumpy dwarf wheat that Davis shows pictures of, but they don't look as tall as they did in the past. Maybe Winter wheat is not as dwarfed as Summer wheat.

This is why I don't think that low carb eating is the answer for the majority of the population. There's a possibility that some improvements can be made, with people eating less sugar and junk food, but I just don't see wholesale changes being made.

Most people don't want to change, and never will. Look at all the people with full blown diabetes who are absolutely determined to keep on eating their pies and cakes and trying to control their blood sugars with insulin and drugs. If going blind and having their feet cut off doesn't stop people from seeking their sugar rush, what in the world will?

If you add in the vegetarian movement who will fight low carb tooth and nail until the end, plus the enormous financial interests who will fight to keep people eating their processed junk, then I don't know how things can change very much.

Can't say I know the answer. Even those of us who are completely convinced of the wisdom of this way of eating have to struggle at times to walk the straight and narrow.

Maybe someone really will come up with the solution in a pill, something that will increase insulin sensitivity, or maybe an artificial pancreas that can be surgically implanted. I just don't know.

They're probably thinking of GMO, which is another type of genetic modification, but the wheat probably all over the world was bred and mutated (bombarded by radiation, perhaps) to be dwarf with a big seed head. That changed the wheat seed drastically.

This is so true. I remember when I tried atkins around a decade ago and couldn't do it because I wanted my carbs and my body was telling me I needed them. I think I thought most of the quotes posted at that time. I rationalized that I needed them but in reality, what I need is quite small and what I get them from a few veggies that are nice sources of fiber and nutrients. Wheat? where are all the nutrients in that? Added I guess because I'm pretty sure wheat doesn't have all the good stuff that an avocado or some spinach does. Definitely cannot compete with an avocado at all.

But they also have been brainwashed, and even now, decades later where people in the million have lost weight on atkins or other LC diets and gotten quite healthy it's still some big debate. What's most amusing to me is how people cite that you gain it all right back as soon as you go off atkins as if nobody ever gained weight back from any other diet when they stopped. In this case it's just too many carbs and probably returning to unhealthy processed foods whereas you were eating healthy for a while. There are very few diets out there that are actually healthy. Weight watchers comes to mind. They have gone to great lengths to allow people to eat all the unhealthy crap they want and people consider that very healthy.

Several years back, we showed up at the funeral of an elderly relative, seeing folks we hadn't in years. They would sidle up to my husband, murmuring how good I looked, was I still on Atkins?

He would say, "Yes, she likes it very much," and they would relate how they had lost the weight on Atkins, but went off... and gained it back. "You have to stay on it," they would say, with a touch of indignation.

YES. YES YOU DO.

yes, funny how that works.

Another amazing (133 pound) success story today where Dr Davis summarizes how Wheat Belly works via three main pathways. These are not necessarily blocked by an Atkins/PP diet unless like WearBear and me, you stick with real unprocessed foods on the low end of carb intake, and dont "climb the carb ladder" much at all.

I think one of the reasons people can't or don't continue eating low carb is that instead of thinking of low carb eating as a means of achieving optimal health, they think of it only as a means to lose weight. For me, knowing that this way of eating keeps me healthy with weight loss just one indication of that, I am motivated to stay eating this way, regardless of how it is effecting my weight. I've been doing this for so long that the thought of going back to eating carby foods is repellant to me. I've reached the point that I don't understand how people can put that junk in their bodies. Of course, I used to be one of those people.

Jean

Jey, what are those "3 main pathways"? I haven't found them yet. And what do you mean by "these are not necessarily blocked"? Thanks.

PS: What happened to the rest of my post? Inserting the quote obliterated my entire post!

Insert the quote FIRST.

Here's the link JEY was talking about:

http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2015/...it-weight-loss/

Update: And I read the article and did not see the "3 main pathways". Is it the description of the 3 ways wheat make us fat and sick?

I was answering Benay's question, that has now gone poof??
What is the difference between WHeat Belly and Atkins or Protein Power?

Thanks, Wear Bear. I forgot the actual link and pathways is probably not the correct word. In many of Dr Davis short summaries and his talks about how Wheat Belly works, those three bolded statements are the primary mechanisms in wheat eliminated, and why people can lose 133 pounds on Wheat Belly vs another LC diet like Atkins or PP which do allow grains and processed foods with additives or a low fat diet with grains:

Gliadin
Wheat germ Agglutinin
Amylopectin A

In today's story and in previous ones, including response to Wheat Council, he points to removing those same three components of wheat that can turn around health. http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2015/...grains-council/

I'd probably still stay keto for other reasons, but it would be pretty cool if they could "fix" wheat! If the modding is what screwed it up in the first place, I guess we could keep modding 'til we get it right.

And that's really the ultimate problem with dieting or most diets in general. It's a process of deprivation to get to your goal and when you are done you return to the behaviors that caused you to gain in the first place. Only some research has shown that deprivation of food can cause people to overeat once they add the food back in. I forget the study but I think it was a group of men IIRC. They were on strict diets but I can't recall if it was a diet to lose weight or just food restrictions. When they were done they returned to eating but ate A LOT and gained weight. This had to be at least a good 5 years ago that I read it if not more. Probably more like 8 or so. That always stayed in my mind because it is the basic mentality and why carbs are so problematic because they trigger the desire to eat more of them as they do not really satisfy in the first place. So this mentality that you have to stay on it is a bit laughable.

I too would change my eating once I got to the weight I wanted, gradually letting different foods back in and gradually eating more. In the end, this is the pattern behavior that fuels the multi billion dollar diet industry because the reality is that most people don't maintain their losses permanently unless they have truly changed their WOE or perhaps in specific cases if their gain was some kind of anomaly where it's not natural for them like weight gains after child birth on those people that as a rule never had a weight issue to begin with.